Moderation Policy

Economistc042

This is wildly inaccurate. EJMR has never tried to be the ethical overseer of the profession and there has never been a rule against talking about dishonest and unethical behavior. If anything, anonymity makes EJMR a good place for honest discussion of this stuff. By your standard, half of the Hall of Fame would merit deletion. Your role as a mod is not to "kpeep someone from making a bad choice." If that were the case, we would ban threads about micro theory because it might encourage a new user to choose that as a field.

I appreciate your thoughts but I wholeheartedly disagree on many of them. Misrepresenting your research (and yes, I get that there is a spectrum and lots of potential gray areas here but changing your coefficients like the post suggested clearly crosses the line) is a potentially fireable offense and depending on the context could even be illegal (imagine consulting where you present research in court, or other areas of industry). We commonly delete posts encouraging other types of flagrant academic dishonesty, having sex with current students, accepting bribes, etc so that's really a huge break with tradition at all.

I get that this is a gray area. And yeah, if there is a CMT around I agree that cracking the whip makes sense. But Brexit fits the Political Economy forum well and the discussions I saw were sometimes stupid, but not spammy. If it seems like nobody is trying to make trouble, take a more passive approach to modding

As for the Brexit deletions being heavy-handed, you know that politics are not allowed on EJMR but the practical standard is that for really big political events the norm is to have one thread for the event and keep it all contained in there. There was already an existing thread on the recent Brexit developments and so I deleted the extra one. That one is really nothing to write home about. As is the norm, if the other mod disagrees and restored those threads, I will stand by that too.

yeah, I don't think we should be removing posts that disclose or encourage unethical professional behaviour (what would happen to the finance sub-forum?), unless they otherwise violate the mod policy (racism etc.)

I don’t have time for these philosophical debates. Your charactisation is wildly inaccurate. EJMR is no more the ethical overseer of the profession than econSpark is. It’s just a place for people to talk about things. One thread getting deleted and restored hasn’t changed that. Stop with the hyperbole. Suffice it to say I disagree with you.
Kirk has also made posts in the past about stopping some of the worst trolls that might confuse JMCs at a tough time of their life. The precident is certainly there from keeping people from getting confused with false information. If there is some concrete information or more details besides people (most likely trolls) saying “yeah I change coefficients all the time!” Then I am happy to leave that thread up. There is also a big difference between discussing and advocating for academic dishonesty (which the old the old thread basically did before it got cleaned up). Either way, the post is restored so give it a rest.

If you really used to be a mod and want to change my mind then you should at least still be a registered user and you can continue this discussion offline. Which I’m happy to do. If you want to keep soapboxing here you are welcome to do so but I’m done. You can also take your complaints to Kirk.

This is wildly inaccurate. EJMR has never tried to be the ethical overseer of the profession and there has never been a rule against talking about dishonest and unethical behavior. If anything, anonymity makes EJMR a good place for honest discussion of this stuff. By your standard, half of the Hall of Fame would merit deletion. Your role as a mod is not to "kpeep someone from making a bad choice." If that were the case, we would ban threads about micro theory because it might encourage a new user to choose that as a field.

I appreciate your thoughts but I wholeheartedly disagree on many of them. Misrepresenting your research (and yes, I get that there is a spectrum and lots of potential gray areas here but changing your coefficients like the post suggested clearly crosses the line) is a potentially fireable offense and depending on the context could even be illegal (imagine consulting where you present research in court, or other areas of industry). We commonly delete posts encouraging other types of flagrant academic dishonesty, having sex with current students, accepting bribes, etc so that's really a huge break with tradition at all.

I get that this is a gray area. And yeah, if there is a CMT around I agree that cracking the whip makes sense. But Brexit fits the Political Economy forum well and the discussions I saw were sometimes stupid, but not spammy. If it seems like nobody is trying to make trouble, take a more passive approach to modding

As for the Brexit deletions being heavy-handed, you know that politics are not allowed on EJMR but the practical standard is that for really big political events the norm is to have one thread for the event and keep it all contained in there. There was already an existing thread on the recent Brexit developments and so I deleted the extra one. That one is really nothing to write home about. As is the norm, if the other mod disagrees and restored those threads, I will stand by that too.

^And to be clear, I am not talking about the usual “take off your shoes before entering the room” types of trolls that pop up every JM season so please don’t suggest that we are going to be deleting those because we aren’t.

Like I said, if you want to continue this discussion with me, take up in chat.

im sorry I am kinda annoyed that there are economists that think we should "sort" my race away from everyone else and such lax talk about an extremely racist topic is NOT OK! This papers should be condemned but instead they are allowed to stay up without any discussion on how disgustingly RACIST it is. and you have an active mod allowing it. So no im not going to shut up.

If you want to talk segregation of the races take it to reddit/breightbart.

im sorry I am kinda annoyed that there are economists that think we should "sort" my race away from everyone else and such lax talk about an extremely racist topic is NOT OK! This papers should be condemned but instead they are allowed to stay up without any discussion on how disgustingly RACIST it is. and you have an active mod allowing it. So no im not going to shut up.

If you want to talk segregation of the races take it to reddit/breightbart.

Furthermore, if you were really worried about racism on this board I would be very surprised if the main conclusion you drew from that paper was "support for segregation". You're just trying to start stuff. Get lost with your fauxtrage.

Unbelievable. Nobody is saying that but you.

im sorry I am kinda annoyed that there are economists that think we should "sort" my race away from everyone else and such lax talk about an extremely racist topic is NOT OK! This papers should be condemned but instead they are allowed to stay up without any discussion on how disgustingly RACIST it is. and you have an active mod allowing it. So no im not going to shut up.

If you want to talk segregation of the races take it to reddit/breightbart.

Why can't we discuss genoeconomics? I realise some racist trolls might try to hijack the discussion, however, when the new york times publishes an article on an important emerging area of economics and we are not allowed to discuss it here, then something is clearly wrong with the modding policy. This is the sortof decision that will push people to move from eJMR to Econspark, which would be a negative outcome for this board. We should be able to discuss important research trends ine conomics despite how uncomfortable the discussion might get.

Its interesting how every time we have those types of threads open they attract tons of racist replies and extremely little economics discussion and then suddenly once they get closed all of the concerned economists come out of the woodwork wondering why we are stifling discussion of these "important research trends".

Why can't we discuss genoeconomics? I realise some racist trolls might try to hijack the discussion, however, when the new york times publishes an article on an important emerging area of economics and we are not allowed to discuss it here, then something is clearly wrong with the modding policy. This is the sortof decision that will push people to move from eJMR to Econspark, which would be a negative outcome for this board. We should be able to discuss important research trends ine conomics despite how uncomfortable the discussion might get.

If there are racist comments then just delete them and maybe close temporarily to cool things off? That MR post is a legitimate research topic btw so I am not sure why you would want to close it permanently, especially considering the economic implications. Also people can certainly challenge the paper's methodology.

That my friend is a perfectly acceptable off-topic thread. They are allowed here. Especially when they have a point (and lots of times even when they don't!) and aren't just insipid megaposting.